Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman debate. & the winner is

Meg Whitman was too canned and promised too much.I am still waiting to see a sign that Whitman understands the issues a layer deeper than her consultant-driven talking points. And when you try to add up her promises, well, they don’t add up.

I want a governor who will tell voters what they don’t want to hear.

Hector Amezoua, AP

Brown and Whitman face off

The highlight of the debate came in the middle when NPR’s Marianne Russ asked Brown if he would roll back all of the funding cuts to higher education to UC, CSU community colleges.

Brown’s answer, “Not my first year, not with a $19 billion deficit. We have to get real here. I certainly don’t want to see them go up.”

Brown also said, “Look, I’d love to roll back the fees. I’d love to have a freeze. But that would require the university either becoming a lot more efficient than it is or the state finding billions of dollars that it doesn’t yet have.”

Whitman talked of her plan to put $1 billion into higher education.

She talked of her plan to cut welfare and put the savings, not into the General Fund, not to the shortfall, but to higher education.

Does that mean lower tuition?

“I would put it to the chancellors and say how do you think we should best use this money.”

In response to a later question, Whitman promised, “In fact, we are going to upend the status quo.” How about upending the script?